“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I said, sighing. I looked at her. “Had you heard any of that before?”

“It’s more than he’s ever told the rest of us,” Sakhmet said. “It—it happened so long ago, it’s hard to think that those events still impact us. Are still driving this.”

“That’s all of history,” I said, gathering the motivation to haul myself to my feet. “Vampires just put a face on it.”

Chapter 17

THE RITUAL chamber had been transformed. Zora must have been busy in the day or so since I’d last been in here. While I’d been asleep, she’d been preparing.

She moved clockwise around the rough-hewn walls of the room, using a candle to light torches set in sconces drilled into the stone. Five torches, for the five points of the star painted on the floor. The flames produced more light, orange and churning, than I’d yet seen in this underground world. I looked up—and up, and up. What I hadn’t noticed before in the darkness: the mine extended upward, a vertical shaft that must have followed the vein of ore. A tower of open space, outcrops of rough granite wavering in the light. Boards lay across the space at irregular intervals, and a couple of ancient, desiccated wooden ladders were propped against the stretches of stone, as far up as the light allowed me to see. Miners had worked here, once upon a time, climbing ever upward in search of wealth. The surface of the wood glittered with that ever-present patina of precipitated minerals.

I gazed in awe, as if I stared up from the nave of a cathedral. The lofty space of a holy site, carved out of what people called living rock. The air seemed to pulse with the rhythm of my breathing. Black smoke trailed upward, to infinity. There must have been some unseen cracks or fissures to the surface, providing ventilation. The chamber smelled of pitch and incense, sandalwood and sage. Oily, hot, pungent. I blinked, my eyes stinging from the smoke, squinting to try to adjust to the changing light. I put out my hands, afraid I was going to get dizzy. I was still hungry, dehydrated. Nothing I could do about it but hang on.

Arriving at the top point of the star, Kumarbis wore a serene smile on his face, hands folded regally before him. He might have been a statue, or a figure from an ancient frieze. He might very well have been the model for one of those stone kings, with his broad face and determined gaze. He had on the same pale, loose shirt and pants he’d been wearing. Only Zora was dressed as some kind of otherworldly priestess. Thank goodness she wasn’t making us all wear white robes.

Kumarbis nodded at me and said, “Regina Luporum, will you join us and take your place in our circle?”

Zora pointed at a spot, one of the branches of the star. I didn’t recognize any of the markings there, nothing that particularly meant “Regina Luporum” or anything else. It could have been scribbling, random symbols copied from a Wikipedia article. If I asked Zora what the symbols meant, would she know? Or would she tell me I couldn’t possibly understand? I wanted to remember this, the symbols and patterns, everything, so I could ask Cormac and Amelia about it later.

I’d wanted to know what all this was about. Fine. This was it.

“We won’t hurt you,” Sakhmet whispered as she moved past me to her own place on the circle. Her smile was meant to be reassuring, and in spite of myself, I was reassured. I liked her. If only we could have coffee together in my favorite diner and have a normal conversation. This setting was damaging my judgment.

When Zora finished lighting torches, she joined us in the circle. Five points to the star, a place for each of us to stand. Kumarbis, then me, then Zora, then Enkidu and Sakhmet. I could see their faces, watch their expressions. They all showed calm, but their bodies were tense with anticipation. I scented their sweat, which gave the air a ripe, musty odor. We are the sacrifice. The sudden thought might not have been wrong, either. I was well into the cave, away from the tunnel. I’d have to get past Kumarbis to escape. That was probably intentional. Or was it critical that Regina Luporum stand in this spot and no other?

I was supposed to be concentrating on the ritual. I was supposed to be cooperating. I was feeling dizzy, slipping out of my own body.

A B-grade horror flick featuring an ancient magical ritual might have done something similar to what Zora cooked up. She brought her toolkit with her and worked industriously, scooping dried herbs out of a wooden box, putting them in a brazier, pulling crystals out of a velvet sack, along with sticks and wands and carved symbols, little sphinxes and Eyes of Horus and Ganeshas and Chinese symbols that I felt like I should have recognized.

I wanted to say something, to poke at her and the obvious theatricality of what she was doing. Like she wasn’t sure exactly what worked so she was going to try it all. But I kept quiet. My jaw hurt, I clamped it shut so tightly in my effort to keep quiet.

Then things took a turn. The next item she drew from her kit was a dead bird—an all-white dove, stiffened, eyes missing. It smelled musty rather than corpselike. Mummified. Next, a sheet of yellowed paper, or maybe parchment, that appeared to be blank. And a jar, containing a very much alive mouse, peach size and gray, skittering up the sides of the glass. There appeared to be holes punched into the lid. These three items she placed in the center of her ritual space, on top of a spiraling shape that must have had some specific meaning.

She moved around the circle, placing crystals and totems, little piles of herbs and salt, sprinkling us all with water from a copper bowl. I blinked and winced when the water hit my face, suppressing a growl. I hoped the others understood the heroic efforts I was making here to be good and quiet. I entertained myself by imagining what Cormac might say about all this, and I decided he wouldn’t say anything. He wouldn’t have to; the smirk on his face would be epic. And what would Amelia say? I didn’t know her as well as I knew Cormac, but I imagined she’d be smirking just as hard. The two of them got along for a reason.

I needed to stop thinking about Cormac and Amelia, and how they could help me if they were here. But I also needed to remember as many details as I could about all this, so I could tell them, so they could help me ferret out the meaning of this. I had to have faith that I would be able to talk to them about this later. So I tried to pay attention to the details they would want to know. The dove, the mouse, the torches, the symbols. My vision was swimming from the smoke.

Zora was saying prayers under her breath. A consecration, I realized. A cleansing, a blessing.